Muscovite Music Hall

The Russians have launched one of their periodic offensives of cultural chumminess with the West. After its invitation visit to Moscow and Leningrad, the Comedie Franchise (France's great national theater) returned to Paris last week with delighted reports of how Georgy Malenkov, Scourge of the Bourgeoisie, had attended a performance of Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme-and had afterward treated some of the cast to candy and champagne. The U.S.S.R.'s famed Violinist David Oistrakh and Pianist Tatiana Nikolaieva recently concertized in Argentina, a Russian concert group is touring Canada, and the Soviet Ballet is preparing to open in Paris, its first appearance in Western Europe since World War II. And in London's Stoll Theater, a less-renowned Soviet dance group is on view: the Beryozka, one of Russia's top troupes of folk dancers in Western Europe.

The Beryozka (Little Birch Tree, so named for a Russian folk song and dance) consists of 31 girls and four male musicians. Opening night was attended largely by professionals of one sort or another-professional British ballet dancers and professional pro-Russians. What they saw looked pretty much like a Russian version of the dances at Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall. Carrying birch branches and dressed in a variety of robes and Cossack costumes with boots, the girls whirled, waved and wove through a succession of intricate drills and sinuous dances. They displayed great verve, precision and variety. In one number, they moved smoothly, as if on roller skates ("the Russian glide," one critic called it); in another, they did a stomping Cossack dance that shook the floor boards. They formed a troika (with three girls acting as horses), chains, arrows and everything but the hammer & sickle. Most impressive was a number in which 16 girls dressed in silk-embroidered costumes executed parade-ground drills with a precision to rival the Rockettes. There was also a complicated swan dance with each girl holding up a hand to resemble a swan's head, on each hand a ring resembling the eye of a swan.

At the close, there was plenty of audience praise, though some thought the girls were a little overdrilled and too heavily coy. Next morning, the critics were unanimous. "Up goes the Iron Curtain on enchanting dancers," said the News Chronicle. Wrote the Times: "An example of Russian theatrical art [which], when it comes West, always surprises us anew, delights us with its Tightness as well as its distinction, and puts a spell on us."

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